Review: Superhero Movie (2008)

"Superhero Movie" is about what you'd expect from the people
responsible for the "Scary Movie" series, but even more watered down.
For sure an improvement over the miserable likes of "Epic Movie" and
"Meet the Spartans," director Craig Mazin's film is still a low-level,
hacky attempt at spoofery that falls far short of the standards once
set by films the likes of "Airplane!" For the majority, the film is
packed wall-to-wall with lame sex gags - our hero gets gangraped by
genetically-modified animals five minutes in - and putrid toilet
humour - the old "falling in fecal matter" one.

Just as "Meet the Spartans" lazily copied the plot of Zack Snyder's
"300" to service its rank humour, so does "Superhero Movie" rely
heavily on one single source in its coure to parody the superhero
flicks. "Spider-Man" gets revamped by director Craig Mazin, scored to
too many jokes that didn't seem humorous to begin with - our friendly
neighbourhood Dragonfly's (Drake Bell) dancing on a wall upon
discovering his wallclimb-enabling superpowers.

To be fair though, the moie has its share of individually funny
moments, with Leslie Nielsen, as our hero's loving Uncle, getting
laughs everytime he appears on the screen. The villainous Lou
Landers' (Christopher McDonald) every appearance is more humorous than
the remainder of the film to, McDonald clearly enjoying himself in
filling out the film's answer to "Spiderman"'s Green Goblin. Drake
Bell, though, and for all his success on Nickelodeon's favoured "Drake
& Josh," too often relies on simply looking confused to communicate
what simply amount to reactions to the poor jokes being thrown about
around him.

In an age when almost every motion picture churned out by Hollywood
rips off countless superior films that have come before it, "Superhero
Movie" is at least honest about how uninspired it is. That self-
awareness, however, doesn't come close enough to forgiving the
obviousness of the gags and mean-spirited tone that has consistently
came with these Zucker-inspired spoofs all the way since 2000's still-
good "Scary Movie." The fat jokes, the toilet jokes, the ugly jokes,
and even the better jokes - a reference to Enron springing to mind -
come without the underlying good spirit you usually expect to find in
a comedy.

To my estimation, Craig Mazin has created a far more approachable
spoof film than the talentless hacks behind the horrid "Epic Movie"
and "Meet the Spartans" created in the past year, but that alone
doesn't make it worth recommending. For a film that pokes fun at a
myriad superhero-themed movies ("Spider-Man," "Batman," "Superman,"
"Blade," etc), "Superhero Movie" lacks a lot in the way of
inspiration, the overly familiar jokes almost precisely the same as
what came in the critically disliked "Scary Movie" films or, more
frighteningly, the terrible "Date Movie."

So far as present-day spoof movies go, "Superhero Movie" is a step up,
but these films clearly have a long way to go before they warrant
recommendation.